


the song without the words

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Hand Jobs, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Music, M/M, Smut and Feels, chocobros and chocogals as background characters, rock star Noctis Lucis Caelum, street musician Prompto Argentum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-22 00:28:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14925947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Noctis Lucis Caelum, still wearing his stage glitter and his emotions on his black sleeve, takes a leave of absence from the stages and arenas of his itinerant musical life, and he runs into the arms of his maybe-lover, a boy who lives on the seaside, a boy who creates music without words.





	the song without the words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aliatori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliatori/gifts), [stopmopingstarthoping](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stopmopingstarthoping/gifts), [Izumii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izumii/gifts).



> Look, if I want to write to cheesy ’90s music, then that’s damn well what I’m going to do: I lived through it the first time around and now cheesy ’90s music is what they play on the “oldies” stations and -- sigh, I’m old but I’m not that old yet, okay?
> 
> And that is so not the introduction I wanted for a Smuturday fic and -- well. Them’s the breaks. /shrug /jazzhands Thanks to aliatori and to stopmopingstarthoping for helping me to choose between two pretty boys.
> 
> You might be able to read this as sort of a B-side to [and all the roads that lead you here are winding](https://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/post/174835743741/i-asked-izuumii-to-choose-between-noct-and-prom), which I wrote for izuumii.

This is it, this is the moment he’s been waiting for, all throughout the night, all throughout the screams and the rising and rising shriek of the music, the wailing guitars and the throbbing drums and the sheer force of standing here on this stage, of standing here, looking out to the myriad faces in the audience and Noctis smiles, tears welling up in his eyes as he tears the microphone away from its stand and with the movement, with the twist of his body toward center stage -- the entirety of the arena falls silent.

Silent enough that he can breathe in, and fill himself up, with the echoes of the song that he’s just been singing. His own song: he remembers the scant inch of ink in the pen, he remembers his chickenscratch handwriting trailing into scored invisible grooves over a torn bit of receipt-pad, he remembers the first time he’d sung out the melody that went with the words and he remembers the shiver of the notes, the right key, the skitter of his own fingertips in ragged chords over a battered and out-of-tune upright piano.

His song that he’d started in the utterly dumbfounded silence of a secret pain -- a secret wake, a secret funeral -- and that he’d ended in the full shout of his own voice, filling a street corner and an entire intersection of stopped traffic with the power of his own sound.

The song that had gone viral and that had gotten him here to this point, this stage, with friends to back him up. Glitter-rimmed eyes and glitter clinging to his gloves, to his ripped-up sleeves, to his battered trousers. His bare feet on the cold boards, hemmed in by the cables of instrumentation and cameras and all the other debris of a concert, on the last day of summer, on the last day of full sunlight, before the year turned into the slow slide of seasons and down into night and snow and silence.

He sings, into the waiting hush: _Time, time, there’s never enough time, when is the right time, take this time from me, steal it from my hands and leave me bleeding minutes and seconds and hours behind --_

The guitars, again. The low insistent tempo of the drum, thumping against the beat of his heart. The keyboards on the long long long note that he sustains, on the word _behind_ \-- the perfectly held note of it that he tightens and tightens in his body, up on his toes, head rolling back, he’s bent over backward into the perfect pitch of it and -- 

At the last instant, the last gasp, the last second before he passes out because he’s given all his breath and all his voice to that single note -- the last tipping point -- he falls over, and he’s done this enough times that he knows how to catch himself safely, falling onto his braced and taped wrist in a parody of a three-point landing, and he turns, gets up onto his knees, looks out at the night and at the arena and he brings the concert to a close, whispering, “Thank you, thank you.”

Screams and cheers and pleas explode in the wake of his words, shouts for another encore, and he bows his head in silence, and the lights flare out around him, one last blast of defiance into the night, and they go out too.

And that leaves him temporarily blinded except for the blue-flare edges of -- the others, laughing softly, hauling him back up to his feet. Luna, sweaty from an entire night on the bass. Aranea, down to her sports bra once again, and small wonder after her efforts behind the drums. Ignis, the night’s gloves worn down to tatters.

“Get me out of here,” he rasps, and Aranea laughs quietly, and Ignis kisses him on the top of his head, and Luna’s hand is secure around his as she pulls him backstage, past the stagehands and he smiles drunkenly at them, smiles and waves and there’s no one here to bother him, no one else to see after they get past Gladio and the other guys running security for the venue and -- here is the dressing room with his name on it, and he’s the only one who gets to go into it.

“Noctis,” he hears Luna say, through the ringing that persists in his ears. 

“Yeah,” and the haze lifts enough that he can see her smile, too. The lines framing her mouth and the bright unshed tears. 

“You promised me a song, when you came back.”

He laughs, soft breathless. “I did. So you know I’ll come back. You know I will.”

“I’ll send Ravus after you if you don’t,” she says, laughing, too.

“I know you will. Thanks.”

“Thanks to you,” she says, and then it’s her hand closing the door between them.

And Noctis falls to his knees once again, harder landing on a colder floor, and he cries and he laughs and he fights the urge to cover his face. Fights the urge to look away from the mirror and its illuminating frame, that shows him -- the streaks of mascara, the smudged eyeshadow, the glitter-stained ruin of his shirt.

Last night of this, of all this, for now.

His phone rings, on cue.

“Car’s here. Flight’s spooling up.” Gladio, crisp and reassuring. “We got this. You need to get away now.”

“Yes,” and he knows it’s been a long time coming. “I won’t say goodbye to you or to any of the others. I’ll say -- until next time.”

“And there’ll be a next time.” Ignis’s voice coming over the line. “We’ll be here, when that happens.”

“Thanks.”

And so -- change of clothes, his favorite boots, a hasty application of cap and puffy jacket despite the sweltering night. Collars up to hide his face: the car pulls up and Iris gives him a thumbs-up from behind the wheel. 

“Good thing you live out of one bag, you’re ready to go,” he hears her say.

“Thank you.”

Airport, baggage, chartered plane -- he recognizes precisely no one and nothing on this particular flight until he slumps into his seat and finds the ribbon-tied flowers on the table, and the note addressed to him, copperplate writing smudged in places and that’s what makes him smile.

The note is from his mother, and he tucks it into his coat, over his heart, for another time. Another day.

He’ll get there, and she will, and they’ll be able to carry on again.

And the flight touches down in the city where she’d been born, with the salt on the wind and the promise of rain clogging thick in the back of his throat. The streaks of rose-gold dawn on the horizon, the wind that chills the back of his neck, the low sleek growl of an approaching engine and there’s a rider on a motorcycle heading straight for him, straight for Noctis and he holds his ground: he can’t look away, anyhow, not from the bike and not from the rider, black from head to toe except for the transparent face shield on the helmet, and even from a long way away, even with his eyes wearied by blinding lights and a long day and an even longer night -- he can see those eyes, the blaze of blue-violet bearing down on him.

Bearing down on him and coming to a smooth slow coasting halt.

Within the helmet and its confines Noctis sees the crinkle of the lines in the rider’s face.

So he gets himself situated, and it’s strangely easy though he’s never even done this before: cap into his single duffel bag, that he slings to his back by the long shoulder strap. Flowers tucked carefully into his puffy jacket. Second helmet that’s held out to him: he blinks, then, and thinks to ask. “You don’t mind I’m gonna get glitter on this?”

The rider laughs, soundlessly. The arc of him, mirthful and lovely, torn from the night. Movement of the helmet, side-to-side to mean _no_.

“If you say so,” and Noctis clambers onto the pillion and it’s easy to lean into the rider, to wrap his arms around that waist and -- hold on.

Hold on and at the same time, let go -- let go of the years, of the song, of the music that has ruled him all this time -- and it’s something else he’s hearing, the hum of the rider that’s transmitted between them -- strange, to have his body turned into a different kind of instrument, a different kind of resonator, as he falls into the rhythm and the melody that the rider’s creating, low and deep and sweet over the all-consuming cry of the bike.

He holds on. Closes his eyes. Sea-smells, catching on his wrists where his coat is riding up, on the back of the rider’s neck, and Noctis shivers and presses closer -- feels the rider’s hand close around his, just for a moment, just to reassure him, perhaps, or just to warn him -- because then the bike leaps forward and there’s no way to sing in this, no way for the music to rise above the pure rush, the stoop and the speed of them in the world -- 

Even when they pull to a halt inside a garage, with the crash of the waves far below, with the definite taste of salt and the sharp rain-scent on the move -- even with that, he still feels like he’s spinning, like he’s dizzy, and free, and unmoored in the world.

He’s grateful to have a hand to hold on to, guiding him up a set of stairs, through a cramped warm corridor and past framed prints of vibrant birds on the wing, past the quietly waiting curve of a violin in its case on a large square table, past the shadow of a desk and its scatter of pens and notebooks and markers and a single photograph of a boy with blond hair and freckles, stiff smile against a generic green background, and -- he’s finally brought to a stop next to a bed and he falls into it, helmet-first, face-first as he couldn’t do on the stage -- 

“Noctis.”

It’s a wrench, getting up again, but somehow he manages it and he peels off all his layers, from the helmet to his boots and everything else in between, even the flowers, and it’s not the warmth of the blankets he’s looking for, or the soft pillows, or even the constant sigh of the sea -- it’s the rider, it’s the boy, that makes him turn and smile and -- press in. Closer and closer, drunk suddenly off the contact of skin against skin: if he leaves glitter on those freckles as he huddles against that chest, as he noses unthinkingly against the arch of that neck, he’s not actually hearing any words of protest, and he’s not being pushed away.

The one thing he’s grateful for, in the here and now, and the crash of his long hours, the crash of walking away from the stage: is this what it’s like to be free?

And the thought loops and loops in his head and finally he groans softly, and then the hand that’s been smoothing his hair stops.

When had that even started?

When had he started -- and why did he stop?

He looks up with difficulty, into a shrouding darkness, into the moan of the wind, and -- a smile. Soft and small, tilted head, and it’s an invitation to whisper, to speak in very small sounds. “Hey.”

“Hey,” the blond replies.

“Tell me why you asked me to come here again?”

Shoulder, shrugging. Tilt of that head again, in the direction of the door, and the movement is echoed by the rustle in the pillows. “Go if you like. I offered. You took it. Now it’s up to you.”

Small sounds. 

He tells the truth. “Now I don’t know what happens.”

“Give it time. You have time.”

“I do,” Noctis mutters. 

When the blond draws him closer he doesn’t protest -- he does the opposite. He curls in, and he dares to press a kiss against the freckles in their irregular outlines against pale skin, and that gets him a hum and the arms around his waist tightening, just a little, just enough that he sighs and tries to fall in, to fall closer. “Prompto.”

“Yeah.”

Strange that he can’t talk now. Strange that he has to make himself talk now. “I’m so tired.”

“And can’t sleep.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Try something?”

That’s a question: that’s something new. 

But he keeps his eyes shut and he keeps himself pressed to Prompto’s side, pressed to the bed. “What something?”

In response: hand on his chin, turning him, and he’s led to lie flat on his back, but -- he shakes his head, he doesn’t want to open his eyes, he doesn’t want to see -- he says it out loud.

“I know. Been there. Don’t open.”

Which means -- he doesn’t see, he can’t know, what Prompto’s doing -- only the rustle of the sheets, the sudden weight laid on him, of stitches and seams and a light quilt, and then: 

“Is this okay? Am I okay?”

He thinks, behind his closed eyes, and guesses at the question and what it means, and -- he might as well. 

So he smiles and he opens his arms and he says, blindly, “I did say, the first time. You remember?”

Soft chuckle, responding. “I think. What was it.”

The memory prickles pleasantly in his skin, like a beautiful imprint, as glitter-edged as he is now. “First time I kissed you. I -- asked you for permission, and I said I’d let you in as far as you wanted to go. As far as you wanted. As much as you wanted.”

He sits up in shock, eyes flying wide open, when Prompto replies with almost the same words. “As far as you want. As much as you want.”

Prompto, smiling, shadow-eyed before him. Wind and salt in his hair, catching on his smile, the arc of his freckles over his right cheekbone. Glitter, where he’s caught it from their embraces.

And Noctis can’t help but reach out, and something in him leaps like a wild thrill of utterly silent hope, when Prompto leans into his hand, into the thumb that he smooths over that same cheekbone. “You?”

“Me,” Prompto says -- before he blurs out, before he closes in, before he makes contact.

A kiss that knocks Noctis down, his mind falling open, his thoughts flying free, his body dropping back to the pillows as he sighs out his yearning against Prompto’s mouth and -- suddenly that’s the change, that’s the key, the kiss opening up and he pours himself into the contact, craving it like he craves the music that’s written into his bones and into his nerves, the constant thrum of notes being created and he throws himself headlong into Prompto like he’s music too, because he knows it too, music and the genesis of it, and even the hum of Prompto against his mouth sounds like sweet longing, only shorn of its lyrics, shorn of its voice -- 

Against the noise of the world he’s breathlessly listening to their kisses. To the way they snatch their breaths together, in the resting measures -- and then they plunge into each other once again. 

Until he’s left to cry out, solo voice and wrecked, as Prompto’s kisses trail away from his mouth and explore his neck, his collar bones -- the words fall from his lips without him even knowing what they are, because he’s whirling apart, because it’s so good, because they’ve only ever done this once and that time he’d led, but -- but now Prompto is touching him, playing him to hear him sing out his need, and once he’s struck by that thought he keeps babbling, he keeps begging -- even when his voice gives out completely he can’t stop pleading -- 

He nearly screams when that clever mouth nips gently over his sternum -- teeth scraping to follow the curves of his ribs, the planes of his chest, and maybe he turns into that movement, maybe he asks without necessarily using his words because he’s heaving in his breath, and he can feel the point of Prompto’s tongue tracing small circles into him -- around one nipple, and then the other -- 

He thinks he forms Prompto’s name with his mouth, but he can’t hear the word for the roar in his ears as Prompto takes pity on him, as Prompto latches on and sucks.

“Oh god oh god -- ”

Prompto laughs against his stomach and licks a path down and down and Noctis shivers, wears out the word “Yes” with how he’s mindlessly repeating it -- 

He stops dead in his tracks with the first brush of fingers against his cock: stops breathing, almost, wound up with anticipation, with the need that’s been stirred up in him, that knots and knots in his nerves till he thinks he’ll snap, he’ll fly apart, strings pulled too tight.

“Breathe. Noctis.”

He does, shocked gasp, and the answering laughter of Prompto. Hand moving on him, familiar and unfamiliar, sure-fingered stroke -- and he changes rhythms, again and again, and Noctis can’t anticipate him at all. Slow and fast and light and hard and it’s a tease, it’s all a tease, winding him up, and he’s run out of words at last. Run out of sounds at last. Silently hanging on every movement of Prompto’s hand, Prompto’s fingers. The edge of a nail, digging in for just a breath, just below the head. The swipe of a fingertip over the slit. The confident stroke of thumb down sensitive skin, following the vein. 

“Good,” he thinks he hears Prompto say.

Or maybe he doesn’t, because the next thing he knows, Prompto’s kissing him again, deep and rough and filthy and he helplessly winds his hands into soft hair, holds on for his life --

And Prompto’s hand never actually stopped moving on him -- is stroking, hard and punishing, throwing him inexorably to the edge and his scream is muffled in that merciless kiss, when he finally breaks, and relief is -- like a high shattering note of gratefulness, and he falls apart in its wake.

“You?” he asks, a long time after, when he’s able to catch his breath and the thread of his thoughts once again.

He’s not expecting the devilish uptick in that warm smile, or the words that fall from his mouth: “Have me. Later.”

“Yeah? Yeah,” he mutters, and hauls Prompto down into a fresh kiss, a new kiss, glitter and the promise of a song.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
